New WT course teaches students to appreciate Texas Panhandle landscape, history

West Texas A&M University English professor Bonney MacDonald, left, leads a discussion in a nontraditional classroom setting at Mariposa ecoVillage off Soncy Road. Environmentalist and philanthropist Mary Emeny, right, also attended the class.

Cows that graze outside the front door of a college English course might be a disruption for most classes, but they were simply part of the regular experience of a new West Texas A&M University summer course.

WT English professor Bonney MacDonald started a course this summer titled “Aridity, Land Perception and Community in the West” in the Hospitality Center at Mariposa ecoVillage in northwest Amarillo.

“It became just a natural match to have a college course out here as a trial run for a unique and alternate way of doing education,” MacDonald said.

Mariposa ecoVillage is a development just northwest of Amarillo off Soncy Road. It is designed to be a sustainable community of residences and businesses on a 625-acre site owned by local businesswoman, environmentalist and philanthropist Mary Emeny, who participated in each class.

The course teaches students about topics such as the local landscape, the history of how people have used or misused the land and how land has shaped the way people live in the Texas Panhandle, MacDonald said.

MacDonald said she wanted the class to be set in an area such as Mariposa so students can hear about the topics they discuss and see the importance of nature.

“There’s something unique about the way we have conversation out here that isn’t duplicated in a regular classroom,” MacDonald said.

Emeny said the course was a good fit at Mariposa because she wants the area to be a place where people can learn how to live in a way that maintains their ever-changing environment.

MacDonald said having Emeny as a part of the class was helpful because she could localize the content of the readings in a way that made them meaningful to students instead of the class simply talking about concepts.

MacDonald also said she wanted the class to help instill a sense of how people affect the land around them.

“For me, that’s one way of ensuring that students will invest what others have called ‘social capital’ in their home places,” she said. “Higher education that partakes in an awareness of place seems to me something worth pursuing.”

Interim Provost Wade Shaffer said he thinks students benefit anytime they can get out of the classroom and see how the topics they study affect real life.

“Here’s another opportunity for students who are reading about the West, who are reading about the issues around water and aridity to actually be on the ground and to see it firsthand,” Shaffer said.

The idea of taking classes off campus has been around a long time in programs such as study abroad, but more classes are moving off campus yet staying close to the college or university, said Lissy Goralnik, an instructor for Lyman Briggs College, the natural sciences college at Michigan State University who studies environmental ethics and off-campus courses.

Goralnik said science courses often leave the classroom to study in the field but humanities programs such as English don’t get out nearly as often.

“We still need to form relationships with the systems that we’re writing about,” Goralnik said. “We’re telling stories about them, we’re making arguments about them, we need to understand what they are in reality and context, not just in theory and conversation.”

WT English major Joshua Adams, 27, said he grew up in Amarillo, but MacDonald’s course helped him understand the importance of the land and culture surrounding his hometown.

“Growing up in Amarillo, there is kind of a stigma of, ‘I’ve got to get out of here,’ or the idea that this is a small city and there is nothing going on and it’s not important,” Adams said. “(I now have) a bigger appreciation for where I’m at, where I was born and what this place means.”

Adams and three other students met twice a week from June 4 to July 9. They read and discussed several types of literature about the West, including fiction and nonfiction essays, MacDonald said.

Shaffer said the university has about a dozen classes each semester that regularly meet off campus, with more in the summer.

He said part of the university’s strategic plan is to increase opportunities for classes to meet off campus where students can have hands-on learning experiences.

Sophie Schakel, 22, an English major at WT, said she wanted to take the class because it was unique, and it gave her a chance to learn about how people use land in the Texas Panhandle.

“I’m not so unattached from where we are as I used to be,” she said.

MacDonald said she thinks the location and quality of content allowed the class to share ideas and discuss topics deeper than they would in a different setting.

“This is a combination of being in a particular place that is a little bit off of the grid or off of the beaten path that allows certain kinds of conversation to take place,” she said. “When you have these kinds of readings in front of you and they’re oriented toward place, as well as personal and big-picture issues, magical stuff happens.”

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As a father I would be [filtered word] if my daughter (who is currently in college) wasted my money on this class. As a taxpayer I am [filtered word] that they are wasting my tax dollars on this class.

I would be interested in reviewing the syllabus for this course. Perhaps a section on xeriscaping and the use of drought resistant grasses in reseeding land would be
useful.
The several university ag centers [WT and Texas Tech] and TAMU Research Centers] would be a significant resource if one wants to understand water, irrigation, new plant varieties, the prairie, and climate.

If reading articles constitutes the course, reading alone will restrict the learning experience. If so, the students have been cheated. Time and money and knowledge are priceless. Illustrative of waste is the choice of fiction may merely reflects the literary preferences of the instructor and nothing more.

There is more to the Panhandle and South Plains than most college-university instructors and professors know. Human or social capital, as it is called, is important, of course, but the concept of social capital is far more than an intellectual exercise in feeling good about 2012..

Again, the syllabus would be revealing to see if there is substance to the course.

What a great idea! I'm sure this fascinating subject will surely help these people get a good job once the graduate.... I can imagine them being asked during a job interview: How has the land shaped the way people live in the Texas Panhandle?

It's no wonder today's students as a whole are so ill-prepared to enter the workplace! I know, I almost daily interview them and they are unbelievably unprepared to work for a living. Only about 1 out of 10 get thru the preliminary interview successfully. I can't really blame them as it is Professors like Bonney MacDonald that are responsible for pushing such socially correct but practically useless courses on unsuspecting/unknowing students that will never be able to get a job thanks to the Professors massive egos... to bad kids, you will just become another generation of welfare recipients.

Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear. Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787

I think Wtamu is doing a wonderful job with classes like this. They are diversifying their curriculum & giving students the same type of quality education they would get at much larger more expensive universities. There's always going to be a few crabby naysayers who just can't stand anything new.

Professor MacDonald is a wonderful professor and WT is very lucky to have her. She loves this area and will do anything to help her students succeed. They may not get a job as a result of this course, but they will learn. Theory Boot Camp '11!

Regardless of all the negative comments, I think this class is a great idea. I grew up in Illinois and have always been interested in learning more about where I now reside. I'm also one of the few Yankee transplants who think Amarillo and the Panhandle's unique flatness is a beautiful attribute. My parents, who still live in Illinois, think this area is nothing but stark ugliness...but, I disagree. Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder. I love being able to see for miles and miles.

I graduated a very long time ago (2 degrees) and nothing I learned was ever asked in a job interview that I recall. If colleges are failing in the way you describe, it has been going on for a long time. I felt like my education provided a foundation for a lifetime of learning. And most of it was at WT. Technical schools prepare one for the very job that person will do. Colleges and Universities have a much broader purpose.

Bonney MacDonald sounds like a very innovative instructor, something we need more of and not less. When I think about the "gray" classrooms I sat in to get my education, I would have loved the experience of being in the actual environment I was studying.

I am most concerned about individuals who can't spell or compose sentences and paragraphs adequately.....an issue that needs to be addressed long before these young people see a college instructor.

First - This course sounds fascinating and, as others have commented, innovative...two things that the Texas Panhandle could certainly use.

Second - College is not necessarily a place where you show up to get a job. It's somewhere you go to learn how to think and a course like this promotes exactly that kind of personal development. The negative comments listed here remind me more than ever of the value of a quote from Harvard University President Larry Summers in the film, "The Social Network", where he said, "Harvard students think inventing a job is better than finding a job."

While skills and knowledge of a trade are important components of finding a job in today's difficult market the ability to think creatively is just as essential in determining success. It is not the mission of a college or university to get you a job. It's yours.

Many young people may squander a liberal arts education by not being able to translate it into a craft but that doesn't mean universities around the country should lower the bar to accommodate the kind of mundane expectations those lacking ambition and creativity have.